Who Do You Serve
ASH
A haunting shriek of something… other fills the voidlike cavern. The sound wraps around the moonstone red stalagmites that rise up and reach down from the internal bowels of this cave like the weeping of blood from stone. Ricocheting around each roughed rock formation, the noise bounces toward our backs chorusing a haunted melody and urging us forward at dangerous speeds.
Making it seem as though this gatekeeper circles us. Making it feel like the bastard gives chase.
But I am not fooled. My magic can sense him as we round a particularly sharp corner and I know he lies in wait. The exit of the cave suddenly rips into a near vertical incline and has our horses screaming in agony as they trudge dangerously upward and toward the loop.
We’re almost there. I can practically feel the deep purple frost of the cold night sky on my skin, but just before we near the plateaued opening of the cave’s mouth he makes his appearance.
A dead king on horseback.
And not just any horse’s back, but Paleo’s. The very horse my father rode into battle on that very last day.
If that weren’t enough to give me pause, the grotesque slit of my father’s throat and the dripping of blood down Paleo's back nearly has me retch.
We slide backward and down, tumbling back into the belly of the beast that is Marrow Hill as we gather in frustration near the base of this cleverly graded slope.
“Useless goblin!” Finn shouts. “Could you not have warned us?”
A thick, nearly translucent shape harpoons itself over our heads and it takes a moment before I realize I am the only one who witnessed the movement.
“Silence!” I call back, my eyes flashing with heat as I fix my glare upon my cousin and put a finger to my lips. “It’s behind you,” I mouth.
Finn’s eyes go wide with panic just as a phantomlike creature of my father’s likeness leans forward to chuckle Finn’s ear.
“Hello little faerie,” the being slithers out, losing my father’s voice completely as he morphs from king to rabid fae, his true form silking into a horse nearly as large as an adolescent dragon.
Goddess, he is bigger than the shadow steed.
A mighty gray steed made from wisps of shadowed smoke given flesh stands a near nine feet tall and nearly four feet wide. Muscles carved from rock light its legs and chest. And teeth like alabaster blades drip with pungent black blood from a widely angry mouth. Eyes of marbled black and red veins peer back at me, the shrewdness of them more than a little disturbing.
Finn rounds on him and I attempt to shake my head, warning him against the offense even as the creature’s eyes flare a bright, pupiless crimson and fix solely on my cousin.
He does not heed my warning, his swordarm striking out even as his steed stumbles beneath his weight, fear for the loathsome kelpie causing the battle honed beast to fall back onto the ground in a heap. Terrified and conquered.
“Aaaaaaahhhhh!” Finn screams, his body trapped between horse and rock, the crack of his bone fracturing a sound that trembles the space even as the one of the kelpie’s hooves hammers the ground and his fathomless eyes fix on me and me alone.
“Youuuuuu have taken something,” the kelpie growls out. “Something gone too long. Something once so lost. It does not belong to you Prince of Smoke and Fury and you should give it back or pay the price in blood.”
Laksha whispers toward me, despite that he shivers with fear. “He is Hidden. He is fae. Tell him of your fight and sway. An audience with him you seek. Tell him, tell him, why you reek.”
With a glance toward the ground at Finn, I release a new sigh of desperation. I’d rather not speak on Daphne’s origins around my cousin, so when I look down to find him unconscious I nearly leap off my steed to click up my heels.
“So be it,” I say cautiously. “I have taken nothing. I know of whom you speak, but I did not take her. She was not snared. I fight for her, the lost one. As does Laksha.”
I can feel Dionie stiffen next to me, a proud smile turning his lips as he says, “As do I.”
The kelpie’s tongue darts out, drool spilling from his lips as he surveys us with hunger shining in his eyes. “Why do you wear her scent, your grace? Why does your magic fairly reek of hers? Did you eat her? Did you thiiieeevvvve from her?”
“Eat her? Are you mad? I am not one of you. Your kind are foul, monstrous knaves.”
“Be it that we are,” the kelpie slithers. “Be it that we enjoy the most of what these lands offer. But this has not always been this way. Who do you serve?”
“I am a prince, creature! As you well know. And you are but a gatekeeper! A faceless wanderer who delights in the pain and suffering of your kill.”
The kelpie laughs, his near iridescent red glow flickering in tandem with his joy. “WHO DO YOU SERVE?” he asks once more, his voice rising in pitch as if he’s about to strike.
Blast it all. I am a prince, damn you!
But… she… she is a queen.
“I serve the lost one true,” I say loudly. “I serve my betrothed. The Queen of Hidden Fae. She lives.”